ACM SIGMOD 2007
UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS (DEADLINE: MAY 1, 2007)
ACM SIGMOD/PODS 2007 CONFERENCE
Beijing, China
June 11-14, 2007

The ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) wants undergraduate students who have an interest in database systems to experience the cutting edge research presented at the ACM SIGMOD / PODS Joint Confs. (Intl. Conf. on Management of Data and Symposium on Principles of Database Systems). In order to help those undergraduate students attend the conference, hence encouraging them to pursue a career related to database research, a scholarship program was introduced by SIGMOD in 2000 and successfully continued in the following years. It is worthwhile noting that the program has been of a truly international nature.

Each scholarship provides up to US$1,000 to defray conference attendance costs (e.g., travel and lodging) plus Conference registration. Awardees will be responsible for their own travel arrangements, including health insurance if necessary. Selected students will be recognized at the ACM SIGMOD 2007 awards sessions.

All undergraduate students who have completed or are enrolled in a database course by the application deadline are eligible for the scholarship. Note that, for the purpose of this award, a student is considered an undergraduate student if he/she has not yet obtained an BS (or equivalent) degree or has obtained that degree on or after December 2006, and he/she is not enrolled in a graduate program at the time of the application. If the applicant's school system is "non-traditional", and the applicant consider him/herself eligible then the committee should be contacted before the application is submitted. All application materials must be received no later than May 1, 2007. Decisions will be sent to the applicants by May 9, 2007.

In order to apply for the scholarship, students must send an email to sigmod07ugrad AT ics DOT uci DOT edu.   The subject of the email should be "<candidate's name> ACM SIGMOD Scholarship APPLICATION".  The following information should be included (not attached) in the email in plain text. No HTML, PDF, Postscript or any other type of data will be accepted.

  1. List all courses (and respective final grades) taken so far in the undergraduate program as well as current GPA.
  2. List any scholarships, awards or honors earned.
  3. Current academic status, including number of years until graduation.
  4. Professional Organization Affiliations (e.g., ACM, SIGMOD, IEEE, Local Chapters, etc.)
  5. List of publications (if any) and or non-trivial (e.g., non-course) projects in which the applicant participated.
  6. In 100 words or less, write about "why am I interested in database research and how would I benefit from attending SIGMOD/PODS 2007."
Additionally, the student must have a qualified person send an email to sigmod07ugrad AT ics DOT uci DOT edu.  The subject of the email should be "<candidate's name> ACM SIGMOD Scholarship NOMINATION". The following information should be included (not attached) in the email in plain text as well (again, no HTML, PDF, Postscript or any other type of data will be accepted). 
  1. Nominator's Name
  2. University and Position
  3. Professional Organization Affiliations (e.g., ACM, SIGMOD, IEEE, etc.)
  4. A statement about the relative standing (performance-wise) of the nominee at his/her University, in particular in database courses, and how far from graduation the nominee is (i.e., what percentage of the program has been completed at application time).
  5. In 100 words or less, justify "why the nominee deserves to receive this scholarship".
By sending a nomination, all nominators explicitly agree to be contacted by the ACM SIGMOD Undergraduate Scholarship Program Committee to clarify any of the points of his/her nomination. All applications should be plain text with the proper subject lines as explained above. Any application that does not satisfy these conditions may be flagged as junk mail and automatically discarded without further notification.

The decisions made by the ACM SIGMOD Undergraduate Scholarship Program Committee will be final. The Committee also reserves the right to not award the scholarships to any applicant. We look forward to receiving a large number of applications and wish all applicants the best of luck.


Important information regarding visas:

Please check this page about information related to getting visa to China. A general suggestion is to start the process to get a visa to China as earliest as possible.


Important Dates:

Submission Deadline: May 1, 2007, 5 PM, PST
Notification of results: May 9, 2007


Program Committee

Magdalena Balazinska, University of Washington, USA
Alin Dobra, University of Florida, USA
Claudio Gutierrez, Universidad de Chile, Chile
Chen Li, UC Irvine, USA (Chair)
Qiong (Joan) Luo, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
Felix Naumann, Hasso-Plattner-Institut, Potsdam, Germany
Prasan Roy, IBM Research, India
Tengjiao Wang, Beijing University, China